Lives of the Monster Dogs

ISBN: 0340685972 ;
In the near future a group of dogs head for New York, but these are not your average four legged friends. They walk on their hindlegs, can talk, have hands and dress in formal 19th-century Prussian clothes. This is their story.

It is the story of how they were created, modified over generations in the isolated village of Rankstadt. Designed to be the perfect followers, soldiers who were as loyal as dogs, yet as intelligent as people and with the ability to fire guns. But generations before his vision was complete Augustus Rank died, leaving his followers to complete the task. Eventually they did.

This is a wonderfully original book. The characters are intriguing, the plot is bizarre and memorable.
Is it our intelligence that makes humans so different from the rest of animal-kind?

A keeper

“These things are always amazing-the hour before you meet the person you’re going to marry, the last time you speak to someone before they die, even the moment before someone calls you, when they’re reaching for the telephone and you don’t know it yet. Those currents just beneath the surface of your life, separating and converging, all the time.”;
“Hope is motion. Curiosity, desire and hope alone can keep the surface from being drawn back to reveal the terrifying mechanism of the world. I would give my life, Cleo, to keep you from having to hear the noise it makes. It is a dead hum.”;